Well, the week has been consistent, I must stay. I started with a fridge on the fritz and I end with a flat tire. Just went out to move the aforesaid Chevy PU into the garage and it didn't drive right. I heard a big bang when I was on the highway earlier this evening but there was no change in driving it (though I was headed off to a side street, and I drove on boulevards the rest of the way home). This is what I pay AAA for. I'll call early so the burly fellow who arrives to change my tire won't get too hot out there in the driveway.

Beware! This is what you get when you run over pointy headed pseudo-intellectuals and their sidewalk chalk on the highway!

I don't remember that one, but he goes "Ack!" a lot. I visited that thread where someone will eventually get to be the last to post, and put something there just to say something. You just never know what people are going to read into the sound of a cat urping up a furball.

Such interpretive skills the boy has, to take a random uttering on a different thread and assume it was aimed at him or was an invitation? Quote Bill the Cat and he imagines a treatise by Twain, perhaps? (i.e., "eschew surplussage.")

Because BB is from another family, and has escaped his chores at home. If you go out later and find him, perhaps he can teach you a few wiles. No guarantees, though -- remember, "You can't BS an old BSer". And ours is the Mother of them all.

Before we start slinging around black pots and kettles, BB, let's both acknowledge that your bow is strung just a little too tight to tolerate much of the wide-ranging repartee on this thread. Your distinctions are of no consequence when it come to the quality of discourse in the MOAB.

Mom says you need to go outside and play, and she said to give you some sidewalk chalk so you can go write a sonnet on a freeway retaining wall. I suggest a linear format on the left side of the road or drivers won't have time to read it (unless traffic has ground to a halt, in which case you can make it as tall as you want.)

"Crap is a term meaning either poor quality or feces. The former meaning is sometimes considered mildly vulgar; the latter meaning is oftentimes considered mildly or moderately vulgar, but could be, on occasion, viewed as strongly vulgar by means of scatological and sensory-provoking use of the word.

In its former meaning it also connotes inaccurate, of little factual substance, lies, hype, or quackery. It can be partnered with "bull" to enhance the power of the word.

The word is considered by many people to be less offensive than "shit", which holds similar meanings and can be used nearly interchangeably. Some people find the word crap offensive, even if not intended to mean feces, and will use the minced oath "crud" instead. Alternatively, for some people, crap more closely retains its association with feces than "shit" and is therefore more offensive than the latter."

Except MOAB, which started out at BS. You can't be .9 and 1.0 at the same time, although .9 is contained within 1.0. Thus MOAB is perfect and contains within it The All, The Cosmic Unity. I leave it to you whether or not MOAB is the Ultimate Religion, but I will point out that there is no collection taken and everyone is infallible and every day is MOABday....

Branding. Yup, all the companies today talk about "branding": Toyota, Coca-Cola, all of them. The idea is to became so identified with a brand that you immediately identify when you hear the word.

Now, out here in the Wild West "branding" has a bit of a different meaning. There's the Crazy-Leg T, the Ten In Texas (XIT), and lots of others.

So an email came through on "branding" libraries: making them identifiable with an idea.

But I'm in the Wild and Wooly West, not in New Yawk or Boise or something. So I have today sent off an application to the Idaho State Brand Inspector to register the brand MPL connected with a rocker so that this library can, if we choose, run cattle, sheep, and horses.

Speaking purely as a lesser prophet, I can confirm Rapaire's suspicion that Moses was buried somewhere in this thread. It wasn't his fault, really; he tried. He was just too serious, and couldn't keep up. So he got covered up with high-speed BS somewhere in the vicinity of 9,322.

Amos

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Now. Everyone open their Bibles and turn to Deuteronomy, Chapter 34, verses 5-7. There you will find it written that Moses, THE Moses, died in and was buried in...MOAB!!! And not the one in Utah, either!

Yes, Moses, the Leader of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, the dude who brought down the Ten Commandments, the Head Honcho of the Exodus, the cat who brought the plagues on Egypt, that Moses, is somewhere in MOAB.

A similar dish was made from before history started until 1867 CE, when it changed. The earlier recipe was made in a sheep's bladder and contained chopped ilk innards, thistle roots, and the seeds of various wild grasses and seaweeds. The stuffed bladder was then boiled for several days in "wylde seewattr" before being thrown at the English or, on the three days when there were no English in Scotland, in the general direction of England.

This was called "hagus." Note difference in spelling and pronunciation -- it has very often been confused with the more recent culinary disaster, "haggis."

Considering that the Outer Orkneys House (or OOH) was reliably dated to April 7, 5398 BCE, at 1453 GMT and the haggis (which is Old Lower Scots Gaelic for "betcha won't eat THIS") from only 1867, I doubt it.

The spurtle as we know it today evolved from this, which was found in an Tin Age house in the Outer Orkneys. Indications are that the "hussywyfe" used this to stir the porridge as her "hussiban" lay in the corner in a stupor brought on by too freely imbibing the local "whoopywattr" (actually he was still in the corner sleeping it off when the house was discovered in 1897).

The spurtle's evolutionary trail split when the perforated spurtle, or chanter as it is called today, was inserted into a sheep's stomach filled with oatmeal porridge and blown. The resulting sounds were so incredulous that not even the Highlanders themselves could believe them and adopted the sound of the so-called musical instrument as their racially-identifying mating call.

Because of this, a movement towards non-perforated spurtles gained tremendous momentum and resulted in the kitchen utensil of today.

The word "spurtle" comes from the "spurt" of porridge which comes when a perforated chanter is inserted into a pot of cooking porridge and blown.

The forgoing was adapted from Chinook and Hausenpfieffer's definitive work Highland and Lowland Spurtles of the Outer Orkneys and Scotland in General (Edinborough: Hamish & Wee 'Uns, 1906).